books in review

Books in Review

Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, Volume 1

By Saul Friedlander, Harper Collins, New York, 1997, 436 pp., $30.00

Reviewed by Walter Laqueur

On Nazism and the Jews a great deal has been writ ten--personal accounts and learned monographs--but there are very few full-scale, general works and, as far as the prewar period is concerned, Saul Friedlander's work (the first of two volumes) is not just a fine book, it is the only one we have so far. He covers the period from Hitler's rise to power to the outbreak of World War II, and he describes both how decisions were taken by the Nazi top leadership to solve the "Jewish question" and how the Jews of Germany (and later also Austria) reacted.

The author belongs to the generation of historians born on the eve of the Nazi era, and he spent his early years in Nazi- occupied Europe. He now teaches at UCLA and at Tel Aviv University and is well known as an advocate of various innovative approaches, such as psychohistory and the whole complex of "history and memory."

At a certain stage in his professional career, he became prominently involved in a dispute among historians that has raged for almost a quarter of a century, the debate between "functionalists" and "intentionalists."

The argument of the functionalists in briefest outline (to paraphrase the author) is that Nazism was driven by the chaotic clash of competing bureau- cratic and party fiefdoms and that the planning of its anti-Jewish policy was mainly left to the cost/benefit calcula- tions of technocrats.

In other words, ideology was of rela- tively little importance, Hitler was ba-

sically a weak dictator and the Holo- caust happened at least partly by accident. One thing led to another, having killed some Jews, the bureaucrats had to also kill the rest. Most of the functionalists are German, but there are also some in England and America. They do not deny that mass murder took place, but they certainly deny its uniqueness-- mass murder after all, did take place at various times throughout history.

The intentionalists, on the other hand, emphasized the crudest of racial and anti-Semitic rhetoric in Nazi ideology, while Hitler was not omnipotent, he was involved in an all important decisions (or at least could have made had he wanted); while he did not have a blueprint as to how exactly to exterminate the Jews from the beginning and which he cons idered a var ie ty of schemes over the yea r s - - t o deport, shoot or poison them--his central aim, his basic intention, never changed.

Friedlander is an intentionalist , though he stresses from time to time that he does not wish to return to the sim- plistic early interpretations with their emphasis on the role and sole responsibility of the Fuhrer. Such assurances make sense in the context of academic polemics in order to secure one's flanks in academic battle, but I am not sure whether they are really necessary. For even the most primitive intentionalist is infinitely closer to historical truth than the functionalists, preoccupied with their outlandish constructions.

If Hitler had been assassinated in 1936, chances are that World War II

Social Science

Books of the Month

In every issue the editors of Society present a sampling of the best new books received. They are selected on the basis of significant coverage of social science problems and con- cerns as well as writing style and pre- sentation that appeal to a broad reading public.

James Tunstead Burtchaell. The Dying of the Light: The Disengage- ment of Colleges and Universities from Their Christian Churches. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. $45,00,

Sanford Lakoff. Max Lerner: Pilgrim in the Promised Land. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. $25.00.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Secrecy: The American Experience. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. $22.50.

Louis A. P6rez, Jr. The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in His- tory and Historiography. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. $16.95.

Frederic C. Schaffer. Democracy in Translation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998. $39.95.

Gilbert Shapiro and John Markoff. Revolutionary Demands: A Con- tent Analysis of the "Cahiers de Doldances" of 1798. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. $75.00.

84 l SOCIETY �9 J A N U A R W F E B R U A R Y 1999

would not have broken out and that millions of Jews would not have been killed. Hitler, needless to say, was not the only person in Germany dreaming about territorial expansion nor the only rabid anti-Semite. But no other Nazi leader had the total self-assurance, the willingness to gamble, the authority, the single-mindedness and the evil genius of Hitler.

There still would have been conflicts between Germany and her neighbors, and it is doubtful whether there would have been much of a future for the Jews in Germany. In brief, history, in all like- lihood, would have taken another turn, and Daniel Goldhagen would have written a pioneering bestseller about Roma- nian anti-Semitism. Of course, Hitler did survive, and hence the disasters that followed.

There is but little doubt that we owe this work to the author's involvement in a debate that should never have taken place but which, given the historians' restlessness, boredom with traditional approaches and other academic defor- mations, was probably inevitable.

About half a million Jews hved in Germany when Hitler came to power, and Friedlander describes what happened to them in the years thereafter, This is an old-fashioned book and very readable, mercifully free of fashionable professional jargon. The material is pre- sented in chronological order with a great deal of illuminating anecdote, mainly concerning the strange fate of individuals.

The author expresses fears in the very beginning that his approach, being both analytic and evocative, leads him into difficulties that cannot be re- solved. He should not have worried: It is the only possible approach, and it succeeds admirably. Perhaps the only discordant note is the use of a new term invented by the author--"redemptive anti-Semitism"--that obfuscates more than it enlightens the reader and in any case does not add to our knowledge; unfortunately, the use of neologisms of this kind has spread from political science to history.

The harassment of the Jews and the persecutions began almost immediately

after Hitler's seizure of power, They were gradually deprived of their civic rights and ultimately put outside the law. If they were state employees, they were dismissed, professionals were for- bidden to practice, businessmen were deprived of their livelihood. They were not allowed to attend the theater and concerts, to sit down on benches in a park, to swim in a public pool. Eventu- ally they were not permitted to own a telephone, a radio or a car, or use public transport.

However, these massacres were im- posed gradually, over the years, partly because Hitler was at first apprehensive about foreign reactions, partly because the Nazis did engage in a good deal of intermarriage over several generations, and there were tens of thousands of Mischlinge--those with one, two or three Jewish grandparents. Each cat- egory was differently treated and even the Nuremberg laws of 1935, which were to provide the legal underpinning to the systematic persecutions, left a great deal to interpretation. Highly placed Nazi leaders could transform a Jew into a Mischhng and a Mischling into an Aryan. As Goering put it: "I am deciding who is a Jew .... " A few distinguished or well-connected people survived as a result.

Some years were better than others; during 1936, the Nazis were on their best behavior trying to show the world during that year of the Berlin Olympic Games that the new Germany was not only a proudly successful but also a humane country. The year after, the persecutions were intensified. 1938 was a turning point; even before Kristall- nacht, the pogrom of November 9 and I0, new and more severe measures were prepared to make life for the Jews impossible.

Seen in retrospect, it is a great pity that the full severity of Nazi policy was not felt from the very beginning, as it was in Austria after the German inva- sion in 1938. For if the persecutions start- ing in 1933 had been more concentrated, less gradual, had been even more trau- matic, it stands to reason that the Ger- man Jews would have tried even harder to emigrate. As it was, a somewhat

higher percentage of Jews left Austria in one year than left Germany in six. Like other authors before him, Friedlander seems a little shocked by the small number of Jews who emigrated from Ger- many, and he gives the figures more than once--37,000 in 1935, 21,000 to 25,000 each year thereafter.

How could the Jews be so short- sighted as to not see the writing on the wall? It is perfectly true that a consid- erable number of them hoped, at least in the beginning, that the Nazi regime would not last long or, at least, would moderate its policies. Fr iedlander blames in fact, the Jewish leadership including even the Zionists, for not having shown a sense of urgency. This is, broadly speaking, correct, but it is the kind of judgment making full use of the benefits of hindsight: In 1933 or 1934; no more than a handful of experienced observers anywhere in the world had reached the conclusion that Hitler 's policy would lead to a world war in- volving, among other things, the de- struction of European Jewry.

Nazism, with its unbridled aggres- sion and radicalism, was a new political phenomenon, not just another traditional right-wing dictatorship. It took years for this insight to percolate. More important, yet, there were many in Nazi Germany desperately eager to leave, but no one wanted to have them. America had closed its gates, Britain took a few thousand children and domestic servants (but only during the last year before the war started). In France, as Friedlander relates, even Jewish leaders showed no willingness to absorb some of their unfortunate coreligionists from beyond the Rhine. It was the same everywhere, even in Palestine, which Britain was administering to develop a Jewish national home. But immigration to Palestine had never been quite free, and in 1936, as the result of Arab riots, it was cut to a mere trickle. In the end only Shanghai remained, Manchukuo (a Japanese puppet state in Manchuria) and some of the smaller South Ameri- can and Central American countries, but only for people with certain qualifica- tions and at least some money. Unfor- tunately, many German Jews could not

BOOKS IN REVIEW / 85

afford the ticket to Shanghai or Latin America.

If the German Jewish leaders had sounded the alarms as loudly as they possibly could, a few thousand more would probably have been saved. But for the majority, there was no escape. No author can feel equally at home dealing with the many aspects of this wide subject. He has to rely on secondary literature; he cannot check every fact and figure, and thus inevitably mis- takes have crept into this magisterial work. To give but a few examples: Albert Baltin, the founder of Germany's biggest shipping concern, was no more its owner than Lee Iacocca was the owner of Chrysler. While the German Communis t s had purged most Jews from their par l iamentary faction by 1932, it is not true, as Fr iedlander writes, that none were left. The writer Carl von Ossietzky, the Nobel Prize winner, was detained in a concentration camp but did not die there, and to argue that many Nazi practitioners of mass murder in the East took their cue from a book written by an obscure academic (Peter Heinz Seraphim) seems incredible; there is no evidence that even one of them read it or even heard of it.

There is a certain tendency in this book to lump together organizations and individuals who have little in common. There was a major German Jew- ish association of war veterans (RJF) and a tiny ul tra-conservat ive fringe group of Jewish superpatriots that no one took very seriously. Yet Friedlander makes it appear as if the latter owned the former, which was quite untrue. He brackets a right-wing Catholic thinker such as Georges Bernanos (who later became a staunch anti-Nazi) or some conventional establishment figures like Paul Morand and Jean Giraudoux with the most fanatic and vicious pamphle- teers, like C61ine. He mentions Gerhart Hauptmann, Germany 's most famous playwright at one time, and relates that of the five distinguished critics attend- ing the first performance of one of his plays, two did not like it and that these two were not Jewish. But s ince Hauptmann was not a Jew either, nor

anyone else of those mentioned (except one who had converted), and since the play was weak in any case, it is not easy to understand what point the author wanted to make that could be of rel- evance to Nazi policy and the Jews. These are cosmetic shortcomings.

The merits of this work are many; it is easily the best book of a distinguished historian. It is based on a great variety of sources, published and unpublished, and the judgment of the author cannot be faulted on any major issue. It is a much-needed book at a time when this specific field has been subjected to a con- siderable amount of charlatanism, unin- formed and wholly subjective writing.

This is a very good, very important book. It needed to be written before the last historians disappear who, because of the date and place of their birth and their personal experience, know certain things in their bones about the period of the Holocaust. These are matters that will demand in future generations an enormous amount of empathy that I suspect only a few will have.

In principle, history can, of course, be written by anyone about any period, however distant, and quite often dis- tance in time will provide a certain de- tachment that may be all to the good. But this is true, by and large, with regard to "normal periods," be it ages of peace or war. The Holocaust was not a normal event; in modern times, it is so remote from the life experience of historians belonging to a latter generation that understanding becomes very difficult indeed. It is even now much easier for a young historian to understand the Emperor Augustus than Adolf Hitler or the reactions of his victims. A survivor of the Holocaust, Friedlander--with his training as a historian, his knowledge of sources and languages and his mov- ing and forceful literary s tyle--was in a unique position to write what is likely to be the definitive work.

The Lineaments of Wrath Race, Violent Crime, & American Culture

Walter Laqueur is chairman of the In- ternational Research Council of the Cen- ter for Strategic and International Stud- ies. He is the author of numerous books, including The Fin de Si6cle and Other Essays, available from Transaction.

J a m e s W. Clarke " The Lineaments of Wrath by James W . Clarke s tunning ly treats the mighty collision of four centuries of violent oppression of A f r ican A m e r i c a n s by wh i te Americans with the current explo- sive subculture of black-ghetto violence. As no other scholar has done, Clarke explores the deep historical roots of our late-twentieth century crisis in American race relations."

- -R ichard Maxwell Brown, Universi ty of Oregon

~;thoroughly researched and el- egantly organized....a significant contribution...an extremely valu- able piece of research."

--Desmond King, Oxford University

Violence has marked relations between blacks and whites in America for nearly four hundred years. In The Lineaments of Wrath, James W. Clarke draws upon behavioral science theory and primary historical evidence to examine and explain the causes and enduring consequences. Beginning with slavery and con- cluding with the present, Clarke describes how the combined effects of state-sanc- tioned mob violence and the discrimina- tory administration of "race-blind" criminal and contract labor laws terrorized and im- mobilized the black population in the post- emancipation South. 1-56000-358-8 (cloth) 382 pp. 1998 $39.95

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86 / S O C I E T Y �9 J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 1999

Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict

By Chris Hables Gray. New York: The Guilford Press. xii + 314 pp., $23.95 (cloth)

Reviewed by Stjepan G. Mestrovic

Despite the title, this is not a book about "postmodern" war. The many authors who write under the rubric of postmodernism--from Baudrillard and Foucault to Bauman and Rorty---cannot agree on what "it" means, and most of them deny being postmodernists even as they p romulga te postmodernism. This is the case even if one attempts to overcome this obstacle by focusing on what the postmodernists seem to hold in common despite themselves, namely, a focus on simulacra.

Chris Hables Gray criticizes the position that war is mere spectacle and simulation. Thus, this book is not written in the postmodern traditions of Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place or Douglas Kellner's The Persian Gulf TV War. In addition, the illustrations and arguments that Gray uses could be labeled as either modern or postmodern. For example, he cites the use of computers, artificial in- tell igence, and high-tech weapons meant to replace the human soldier as tendencies toward postmodern war. Whatever he means by that, it is obvi- ous that these trends are often referred to as modernist. In summary, this interesting book is cursed with a title and theme that alternate constantly between depicting war as the penultimate chaos (apocalypse) versus the penultimate example of order (the perfect war). To add to the mental torture of trying to comprehend this phenomenon, both modernists and postmodernists seek to claim both order and chaos as their theoretical domains.

Let me be clear: despite the author's intentions, this book can be read as a treatise on war understood as modern chaos, postmodern chaos, modern order, and postmodern order. Gray does not make these distinctions and in general, does not bother much with social theory. His stated goal is to explain "what makes war possible" (could there be a more grandiose aim?) and "why war has become the confusion it is now

One of the many confusing aspects of contemporary war discussed by Gray is

the potential for using nuclear weapons in

regional and/or terrorist conflicts.

and to shed some light on what we can expect in the future" (p. 1). This really is too much to expect f rom a slim volume.

One of the many confusing aspects of contemporary war discussed by Gray is the potential for using nuclear weapons in regional and/or terrorist conflicts. He cites the giant simulation map used in Dayton, Ohio to bring the warring ex-Yugoslavs together as an illustration of the mixture of ancient hatreds with the newest technology. In addition, he cites "cyber-guerrillas" in Mexico, the

Zapatistas, who communicate with the Internet.

Why subsume these and other examples under the rubric, "postmodern war," the author asks? Clearly, he is aware that others have referred to simi- lar trends as high-tech war, technowar, the perfect war, computer war, hyper- real war, virtual war, and so on. His re- ply is that the logic and culture of modern war have changed significantly since World War II and that something systematic is happening in art, literature, economics, philosophy, and war. One must note the irony that if something systematic is occurring in contemporary culture as a whole, it must be a modernist something, because most postmodernists abhor systems. On the other hand, one could argue just as easily that contemporary culture is frag- menting, Balkanizing, and undergoing fission. Regrettably, Gray does not pay attention to such subtleties.

According to Gray, the Gulf War and the Vietnam War were postmodern wars because they relied on computers, artificial intelligence, technology, and ra- tionalism. Yet, he undercuts his own argument by pointing out that Desert Storm did not demonstrate that high- tech weapons are crucial, did not end the Vietnam syndrome, and did not replace the human soldier with smart weapons. Similarly, he claims that "the first postmodern war began in Vietnam" (p. 157). This is because, Gray argues, Robert McNamara and others in power sought the perfect, scientific, rational, electronic, computerized, technical war. But again, such aims qualify as modernist and they were not achieved. The United State lost the Vietnam War despite its modernist advantages.

One might hope for more clarifica- tion by turning to Gray's discussion of modern wars. According to him, modem wars use rational approaches, rely on huge administrative bureaucracies, and systematically apply science and technology. Gray discusses the siege of Vicksburg and the burning of Atlanta during the American Civil War as modernist phenomena, and regards World War II as the last modern war. In both the Civil War and World War II, civil-


ians were killed as part of strategic planning, although one important difference between these wars is that computers helped win World War II. I am not sure I agree with this last claim by Gray, but even if it were true, none of these char- acteristics differentiate modernist from postmodernist wars as discussed by him.

Gray further discusses apocalyptic total wars, cyborg soldiers and future wars that will be both "virtual" (human soldiers will be replaced by artificial intel l igence and robots) and "perfect" ("we" will kill millions of the enemy, including civilians, but lose few of "our" soldiers). These predictions for the future are really not new. Fred Kaplan had made such predictions in The Wizards of Armageddon

Books by LGo Bronstein

In both the Civil War and World War II, civilians

were killed as part of strategic planning, although

one important difference between these wars is that

computers helped win World War II.

(1983), and so have many other authors since. Stanley Kubrick's film, Dr. Strangelove, ins t i tu t ional ized this widespread belief in virtual and perfect wars. The culture industry has simulated Kubrick's vision and trans- ported it to outer space ("Star Wars"), but has not altered it. Gray ' s book merely reflects popular culture regarding war, and does little to clarify or deepen the discussions concerning postmodernism.

Stjepan G. Mestrovic is professor of sociology at Texas A&M Univer- sity. His most recent books include Genocide After Emotion: The Post- emot iona l Balkan War and Post- emotional Society.

"To read LGo Bronstein is to discover one of this generation's most original thinkers." --ELIE WlESEL

%60 Bronstein spoke with the confidence of a man who, when he referred to freedom and art, spoke like a prophet--without making predictions." --MEYER SCHAPIRO

"Once in a while, a remarkable intellect erupts on the scene to transform the substance, the strategy, and the style of art history or criticism. LGo Bronstein stands as a paragon of a vision- ary critique of the creative process." --TALAT SAlT HALMAN

Kabbalah and Art SECOND EDITION For all those who are interested in art, ethics, and spirituality, and are eager to explore the spaces where these three great forces converge, Kabba/ah andArt is a remarkable place to begin. A beautiful and important work by a uniquely penetrating scholar, this volume provides the reader with something astonishing. ISBN: 1-56000-353-7 (cloth) 129 pp. 1998 +49 illustrations and plates $49.95/s

Space in Persian Painting The title of this book is deceptive. Bronstein reveals the mind and spirit of various cultures-Islam, Japan, Greece, medieval France, our own 20th century--as evidenced in their art by space itself. World history is seen in the plates themselves and in the kinds of space they illustrate. Into the arts, from the Paleolithic to Mir6, the author's insights are as unpredictable as they are rewarding. The great Arthur Upham Pope, this century's foremost authority on the history and culture of Persia and Chancellor of the Asia Institute, termed Bronstein "original, penetrating, and poetic." ISBN: 1-56000-197-6 (cloth) 128 pp. 1994 +47 illustrations and plates $59.95/s

Fragmants of Life, Metaphysics, and Art SECOND EDITION A series of imaginary letters from various individuals--prisoner, soldier, philosopher, math- ematician, and teacher--presents a brilliantly illustrated history of the worlds of Western art. This work, a book "of space" conceived amid the horrors of the Second World War, remains remarkably contemporary. ISBN: 1-56000-249-2 (clothl 228 pp. 1995 +67 illustrations and plates $69.95/s

Romantic Homage to Greece and Spain MY FABLE, THEIR ART The 156 illustrations range from Iberia and Islam to Western Europe and Central Asia. Through the art of classical Greece, Byzantium, Western Europe, Islam, and Spain, Bronstein finds and reveals the history of ideas. ISBN: 1-56000-117-8 (cloth) 301 pp. 1994 +156 illustrations and plates $79.95/s +47 illustrations and plates $59.95/s

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88 / SOCIETY �9 J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 1999

Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and

Where It Comes From By Daniel Pipes, New York: Free Press, 1997, pp. 258+ xiii, $ 25.00

Reviewed by Paul Hol lander

Hillary Clinton's attribution in 1998 of the scandal surrounding her hus- band's sexual improprieties to "a vast right-wing conspiracy" was a good illustration of the enduring appeal of conspiracy theories. Mrs. Clinton sought to discredit these allegations by suggesting that they were bound to be untrue if the product of a conspiracy and a right- wing one at that.

But what exactly is a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory?

It seems that conspiracy is a short- hand for bad intentions shared and con- cealed, for the ill will of groups of people who come together for the pur- pose of converting ill will into action. It is hard to say what the ideal numbers are: too many conspirators interfere with secrecy and efficiency, too few might weaken the seriousness of the undertaking. Secretiveness is an essen- tial ingredient of the conspiracy: conspirators are dangerous and detestable because they are underhanded and often pursue their goals in disguise, they represent unknown dangers and threats which only the exceptionally alert (and suspicious) can discern.

There is a tendency today to tar with the label of "conspiracy" allegations of wrongdoing (or thinking) one wishes to discredit, at the same time there is no shortage of truly fantastic and bizarre notions which richly deserve the conspiratorial designation, thus skepticism coexists with belief. Unhappily, on closer inspection it turns out that the skepticism is highly selective. Those who justifiably ridicule the fight-wing fantasies of UN troops infiltrating the United States, or the mysterious black

helicopters of the federal government hovering in Western skies will give re- spectful attention to tales of the C1A distributing drugs in black neighbor- hoods and consider seriously every al- legation of U.S. government mischief and subversion in the Third World. In our times, as in the past, the assessment of alleged conspiracies remains deter- mined more by personal or group predisposition than the plausibility of the conspiratorial scenario. Still it cannot be denied that on the whole attributions of "conspiracy" or "conspiratorial" have become somewhat more suspect at least among the more sophisticated publics in the West.

In the final analysis the inclination to believe or disbelieve in conspiracies is tied to political values and beliefs: our enemies "conspire ," while our friends discreetly plan ahead. Better educated, more secure, open-minded and tolerant people are less likely to believe in conspiracies than those more insecure, threatened, fearful and en- meshed in difficulties of various kinds. But if this is the case why, for example is Noam Chomsky, brilliant linguist, widely published author, professor at MIT an avid devotee of conspiracy theories, blaming the U.S. government "for virtually every ill around the world, including.. , pollution.. , mil i tarism.. . pove r ty . . . a l i ena t i on and the drug scourge"? (p. 160). Must one delve into the darkest recesses of the psyche to come up with an answer or would sociological insights shed light on these matters ?

As the case of Chomsky suggests, while the most fervent believers in con-

spiracies do feel threatened and insecure such insecurities are not always or necessarily a result of objective reali- ties, of powerlessness or discernible deprivations. The two major conspiracy theorists of our times, Hitler and Stalin were hardly lacking in power and privi- lege; on the other hand, arguably, their conspiratorial thinking could have had its roots in the early, more troubled and deprived periods of their lives.

What makes the idea of conspiracy both appealing and suspect? I think it is the undeniable fact that it responds to important and widely distributed human traits and needs. The major appeal of conspiracy theories is that they simplify the world and the chains of causation, while providing emotionally satisfactory identifications and explanations of evil; they offer solutions to and explanations of seemingly intrac- table problems. Belief in conspiracies is inseparable from belief in evil, and in a very active and threatening ev i l - - those identified as conspirators are embodiments of evil seeking to expand its power.

If the problems of the world or our lives result from accident, from unin- tended consequences, from impersonal social or historical forces, solutions may be difficult or impossible to find, and--most disconcerting--we end up unable to blame anything or anybody for our plight. It is the major appeal of conspiracy theories that they provide us with targets to blame for our real or imaginary troubles. The disposition to blame is the most important underpinning of conspiratorial fantasies; few things are more satisfying than the righ- teous affixing of blame upon entities, groups or individuals which underhand- edly seek to ruin our existence.

Arguably major rel igions which posit evil (or devil) are also breeding grounds of a conspiratorial mentality; after all Christian beliefs postulate (even if at the present time such beliefs are on the institutional back-burner, so to speak) that throughout our lives we are exposed to temptation, that the devil lurks behind many s i tuat ions and events. A secular religion such as Marx- ism also contributes to this susceptibil-


ity by ruling out that anything of importance (in history or politics) can be accidental and by advocating a highly polarized worldview in which represen- tatives of just ice and injustice are locked in combat. Radical feminism at the present time, too, has its conspiratorial leanings alleging as it does that the insidious rule of "pa t r i a rchy" reaches into every nook and cranny of life ("the personal is political"!) often unbeknownst to its victims. Those anx- ious to raise our levels of conscious- ness often in effect seek to alert us to conspiracies we are not aware of.

It must also be pointed out that the recognition of patterns or trends (in history and politics) and belief in conspiracy are not the same; nonetheless refusal to believe in anything as accidental often creates a predisposition to conspiratorial thinking. Likewise it cannot be denied that there are real conspiracies in this world--often perpe- trated by those who attribute imaginary conspiracies to others.

While conspiracy-mindedness may be linked to basic human needs and at- tributes (the need to blame, the fear of and fascination with secrets, the belief in evil, etc.) there are also characteris- tics peculiar to modern society condu- cive to these attitudes and suspicions. The modem world is complicated and difficult to understand; its threats are often impersonal and responsibility for personal problems and frustrations is often difficult to locate; most important, there has been a growing gap between appearance and reality also nurtured by particular institutions such as political propaganda, commercial advertising, public relations etc. As Pipes points out it is hardly surprising that Jews as agents and symbols of modern i ty achieved a distinguished position at the heart of conspiracy theories. It may also be that conspiracism, by inordinately stressing and exaggerating the importance of personal will, is a reaction to the colossal social-historical and tech- nological forces which came to impinge on human lives during the past two centuries seemingly reducing human will to insignificance.

The author of this original and illu-

minating book is a historian of the contemporary Middle East and was led to this study by an earlier writing (The Hidden Hand) dealing with conspiracy theories in the Middle East, an area where in our times such theories have been especially abundant. It is also in the Arab world that the greatest and most prototypical of all conspiracy theories, that of the Jewish world conspiracy has been given a new lease on life. Given the highly patterned relationship between belief in conspiracy and engaging in one, it is not surprising that the Arab world is also one in which genuine terrorist conspiracies proliferate.

"[T]he Left has better credentials .... Conspiracy

theorists on the Left offer sophisticated and elegant arguments that

enjoy the imprimatur of prestigious presses."

As the author sees it, widely held conspiratorial fantasies are products of the modem Western world, those of the last two centuries (and especially the period between 1815-1945). They found expression primarily in the myth of the Jewish world conspiracy and those of the various secret societies (such as the Free- masons) which emerged at the time of the French Revolution. Pipes begins the book by pointing out that "A new kind of explanation for political events came into existence almost exactly two centuries ago, when some opponents of the French Revolution ascribed to their enemies an inhuman capacity for planning and a hideous intention to rule the world" (p. xi).

Conspiracy theories, he argues, deserve attention not merely as subjects of great and well deserved academic interest, but because they have been highly consequential in our times; the two foremost conspiracy theorists of

this century, Hitler and Stalin ended up killing tens of millions of people im- plicated in their imaginary plots. More generally speaking, Pipes writes, "Con- spiracism encourages a vortex of illu- sion and superstition .... By reducing complex developments to a plot, it ob- structs an understanding of historical forces, it shifts blame for all ills to out- siders ... preventing an accurate assessment of causes and thereby prolonging problems" (pp. 173-174). The O.J. Simpson defense was a recent triumph of the legal application of a conspiracy theory: it was the entire police depart- ment of Los Angeles that sought to en- trap Simpson against the background of the alleged racism of American society as a whole.

It should be emphasized that this is first and foremost an historical study (an "essay," the author calls it) rather than an exploration of the human psyche, that traces the evolution of conspiracy theories over the past two centuries and especially their prototypical varieties focused on Jews and secret societies. Dr. Pipes also shows how the preoccu- pation with secret societies came to be transferred to modem states, and especially three among them, the United States, Britain and Israel.

Among the strength of this volume is its examination of the imbalance between awareness of right-wing as op- posed to lef t -wing predi lec t ion to conspiracy theories. Pipes writes:

"The common perception tends to focus...on the Right as a source of conspiracism...the Left has better credentials .... Conspiracy theorists on the Left offer sophisticated and elegant arguments that enjoy the imprimatur of prestigious presses. A fight-wing conspiratorial anti-Semite cranks out crude tracts with tiny circulation; his leftist equiva- lent, a writer like Gore Vidal, produces best-sellers. The Right distributes home- made videos; the left has Oliver Stone making Hollywood feature films that win top awards" (pp. 158, 159, 160).

Among the interesting left-wing conspiracy theories Pipes takes note of is "the Left 's concept of 'ant i -communism,' a phenomenon it blames for a host of ills in the United States. Rather

90 / S O C I E T Y �9 J A N U A R W F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 9

than see the struggle with communism as...a life-and-death struggle over the human future, it chooses to see this as a conspiracy...[thus] Joel Kovel finds that 'Communist hating is used oppor- tunistically as an instrument to secure power and wealth'.... [I]t was a mecha- nism 'to neutralize workers' power'" (p. 163).

Pipes resists the temptation to inun- date the reader with too many examples of current conspiratorial thinking and makes only few references to one of its major present day American variety that combines Afrocentrism with indiscrimi- nate attributions of racism, including the species called "institutional racism" barely visible to the naked and un- trained eye. Arguably, in present day America the bulk of conspiratorial thinking--besides the violence prone right-wing militias and their support- ers--comes from black demagogues such as Louis Farrakhan and Leonard Jeffries who can rely on audiences re- ceptive to tales of white scholars con- spiring to obliterate the great African contributions to the arts and sciences, or the U.S. military concocting the AIDS virus to reduce dark-skinned Third World populations, or Jews in the forefront of the slave trade. Movie di- rector Spike Lee in particular averred that "AIDS is a government-engineered disease" and also suggested that guns were made available to blacks by whites so they could exterminate each other (p. 3). His reputation did not seem to suffer for any of this. Readers should also be interested to learn that Louis Metzger, a KKK leader in California complimented Louis Farrakhan on account of his grasp of the Jewish men- ace (p. 157). Most recently a student in New York reported that Leonard Jeffries revealed to her that "the Statue of Lib- erty has chains at the bottom that represent slavery in this country. She added, "I am 38 and it's the first time I ever heard that. I think there is a conspiracy to limit the amount of educa- tion being taught to minorities. Jeffries is trying to enlighten us" (New York Times, April 4, 1998). Even a man of respectable intellectual credentials like Michael Lind has been susceptible to

the attractions of conspiracy theorizing, suggesting that a handful of figures co- ordinate and organize the intellectual right in this country (p. 169).

This book provides other remarkable examples of the conspiracy mentality and its tenuous links with reality outside the paranoid subcultures of this country. Bizarre as it may sound Ma- laysia has become of late "a minor hot- bed of conspiratorial anti-Semitism" where Schindler's List was banned and the prime minister insisted that Jews sought to destabilize the country (p. 123). It may also come as a surprise to many that between 1967-1991 the So- viet Union was "the world's largest ex- porter of anti-Jewish hate materials" (p. 165). Conspiratorial thinking survived the collapse of the USSR: in a 1996 survey over 60 percent of the Russians were found to believe that "the West is pursuing the goal of weakening Russia with its economic advice" (p. 114).

Despite all the evidence he marshals Dr. Pipes is somewhat optimistic ("at least in regard to North America and Western Europe") regarding the impact of conspiracy theories which at any rate no longer "drive the actions of govern- ments" (p. 184). I am more apprehensive: as long as the well established and durable capacity to demonize human beings survives so will conspiracy theories, although their impact will certainly vary a great deal depending on the social-political setting.

This is a compact, closely argued, well written and documented work that offers the reader a better understanding of one of the most insidious phenomena of our times; it deserves the attention of all those either morbidly fascinated or concerned with the enormous harm the perverted imagination and mindless scapegoating have done to human societies and millions of human beings in our times and before.

Authored by Paul Hollander

Paul Hollander teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His books include Soviet and American Society, Political Pilgrims, Anti-Americanism and the forthcoming Decline of Political Will and Belief in the Fall of Soviet Communism.

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POLITICAL PILGRIMS WESTERN INTELLECTUALS iN SEARCH OF THE GOOD SOCIETY, FOURTH EDITION With a new introduction by the author This widely acclaimed study asks why so many Western intellectuals admired op- pressive communist systems, while merci- lessly judging and rejecting their own West- ern, liberal cultures. "A horribly funny book...to be kept close at hand and reread whenever we are told of a land where...the human soul is re-engineered and human nature uplifted."

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Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence By Roy E Baumeister, New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, $24.95 (cloth)

Reviewed by Joseph A. S c i m e c c a

Each day, the media bring us reports of the latest incidents of human cruelty. Stories about genocide, serial murders, mothers and fathers killing their own children, mass rapes, and child moles- tations fill the pages of our newspapers; they flash across our television screens. Devoid of any context, save, perhaps, a consensus about their horror, we are confronted by reports of these evil actions without any explanation of why any of them occur. When someone asks for answers, easy ones are offered to assuage them: evil is the random act of lunatics; people beyond the pale; mon- sters who have visited their own unique hearts of darkness. Jeffrey Dahmer was a monster, and so was Ted Bundy. Su- san Smith must be insane or how could she have killed her own children? Timo- thy McVeigh is a sociopath.

But this perception of evil overlooks the work of a small coterie of scholars in the social sciences who are trying to develop explanations of evil rather than relegating it to forms of insanity (which, given the current state of psychiatry, can be seen as almost anything depending upon who is offering the diagnosis). Add to the list of scholars who are using the tools of social science to explain evil, social psychologist, Roy Baumeister. Evil: hzside Human Violence and Cru- el~ is a comprehensive, informative, well-written, and as well argued a book about the subject of evil that has been published in the last decade.

Accolades aside, the first and most obv ious ques t ion is, H o w does Baumeister define evil? His is a simple and utilitarian description: "Evil re- quires the deliberate actions of one person, the suffering of another, and the perception or judgment of either the second person or observer" (p. 375).

Using this definition of human-in- duced evil, Baumeister tells us that there are four major causes of evil: a simple desire for material gain, threatened egotism, idealism, and the pursuit of sadistic pleasure. Not all of these root causes are of the same magnitude, and Baumeis ter leans toward threatened "egotism" (thinking well of oneself) as the most important cause of evil. Vio- lence, evil, occurs when people with high self-esteem, but who have no basis for this view of themselves in genuine accomplishments, see their self-image

Violence, evil, occurs when people with high

self-esteem, but who have no basis for this view of themselves in genuine accomplishments, see

their self-image as being threatened.

as being threatened. The teen-ager who views him or herself as being "'dissed,'" the abusive spouse or parent whose claim to power is tentative in any other situation but the domestic, the rapist who brags that the women he has vio- lated were attracted to h im--a l l can be seen as prime examples of egotism as a cause of evil.

This critique of the popular view that people who commit evil action are l ack ing in s e l f - e s t eem is one o f Baumei s t e r ' s most impor tant arguments. He holds that people who c o r n -

mit evil actions "do not lack for self- e s t eem. I f any th ing , they have t o o much self-esteem, because they ove re s t ima t e t h e m s e l v e s " (p. 74). Baumeister is right. The research evidence s imply does not bear out the popular myth. In short, perpetuators o f evil actions are people who think highly of themselves, not little of themselves.

Obviously, high self-esteem does n o t

by itself cause violence. Rather, it is one 's fluctuating sense of self-esteem, That is why people who are genuinely secure will not be threatened and therefore, not be prone to violence.

A n o t h e r c o n t r o v e r s i a l po in t is Baumeister 's view that more is needed to understand evil than to look at it only from the victim's view. The social sc ien t i s t c anno t jus t take the vict im's perception as objective truth. What we consider to be absolu te ly horrible actions, often are nothing of the sort to the perpetuator. And to label them as a mere defensive mecha- nism does not present anything near the full picture.

The Khmer Rouge truly believed that Cambodia was threatened by its enemies, foremost among these, internal ones. They believed that desperate measures were needed for their regime to survive. This is not to say that Pol Pot and his followers were not war criminals, butchers who slaughtered their own people; or that the same is not true about those who carried out the Stalinist and Maoist purges in the So- viet Union and China. These were evil actions, arguably among the most hei- nous of the twentieth century and nothing can excuse them. However, just to condemn them leads us away from understanding them, an understanding that must begin with looking at the actions from the perspective of the perpetuator, not just from the victim's viewpoint.

Given the scope of this work (after all, how many topics are larger than evil ?) there are numerous other findings and arguments I could focus on, but I will limit myself here to what I consider to be the most important question concerning evil (after, o f course, understanding why people commit it): How can we curtail it? (I have no use for the

92 / SOCIETY �9 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1999

social scientist who remains neutral in the face of human suffering.)

Baumeister concludes that evil is the breakdown of internal controls. Vio- lence, evil, starts when self-control stops. Evil, therefore, can be limited (eliminated is too utopian to even consider) if we can socialize people to curtail their violent impulses. Can we as a society do this? I think we can. But I would be the first to admit that I may be naive. In spite of all the evidence around me to the contrary, I believe in the innate goodness of human beings. Yet, the realist in me knows that evil is a basic fact of life. So, as a social scientist, I believe we must understand evil to do something about it. Evil: Inside Human Cruelty and Violence helps us do just this.

In spite of all the evidence around me to

the contrary, I believe in the innate goodness of

human beings. Yet, the realist in me

knows that evil is a basic fact of life.

A caution, though. This is not a book for the squeamish. Roy Baumeis ter takes us on an objective journey to the true realm of darkness and some readers may not like the road map he has provided. For as he says: "Understand- ing evil begins with the realization that we ourselves are capable of doing many of these things" (p. 5). Unfortunately, like so much of what he says, he is so right about this.

Joseph A. Scimecca is professor of sociology and chairman of the Depart- ment of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. His most recent book is, Society and Freedom: An Introduction to Humanist Sociology. He is currently working on a book about good and evil, tentatively titled, The Transcendence of Evil.

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Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America

By Nancy Rosenblum, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1998

Reviewed by Richard Boyd

Contemporary theorizing about the group and its relationship to liberal democracy has been characterized as much by imagined sensibilities as by hard empirical social science. Too much of the contemporary literature treats "civil society" and associational life as an easy panacea for the ailments of liberal democracy, on the one hand, or as a critical bludgeon against which to jux- tapose an atomized mass society, on the other. Yet when one moves beyond the rhetoric of today's associational proponents, one is struck by the emptiness of real, sociological understanding of the group.

Few have dared dissent from this view of civil society. Perhaps it is fit- ting that the editor of a recent collec- tion of Thoreau 's political writings should step forward and break with or- thodoxy. Nancy Rosenblum's Morals and Membershtp: The Personal Uses of Pluralism marks a turning point for normative theory and social science. This work amply enriches our understanding of associational life, which is as much as to say, dampens our unqualified enthusiasm for vague and indeter- minate notions of civil society.

This work begins with seemingly elementary questions that have been only obliquely addressed in the contemporary literature: What kinds of associational life do we really need in a liberal democracy? And what of groups that do not seem to support liberal democratic sensibilities? Ideally, we find liberal and benign associational forms--Rotary clubs, self-help groups, churches and private welfare agencies such as Tocqueville commends--which clearly foster the traditions and habits

of liberal democratic institutions. But what of those more difficult cases of voluntary groups formed toward illiberal ends--hate groups, militias, or sec- tarian religions; or ascriptive groups such as the Old Order Amish or Hasidic Jews, whose contributions to the larger liberal democratic order are ambiguous at best? Moreover, how does liberal democracy cope with the idealism and thoughtless devotion of group membership that blurs easily into moral fanati- cism? After all, it was a commonplace of eighteenth-century social philosophy that a selfless group would descend to moral atrocities of which no calculat- ing individual would dare partake.

Rosenblum's diagnosis, if not her conclusions, seems not incompatible with the "jeremiad" of liberalism's critics against whom she

here and elsewhere positions herself.

By focusing on these outliers of group life (perhaps more representative than the ideal ized associa t ions of Tocqueville and latter-day proponents of civil society), Rosenblum deftly car- ries us beyond theories of "congru- ence," which look to associational life as necessari ly sustaining of liberal democratic institutions, and those "me- diating" theories which treat the activi- ties of civil society as intrinsic goods.

Focusing instead on the "personal uses of pluralism," Rosenblum calls attention both to the needs that group life answers for individuals, as well as to the dynamic of group formation.

Apart from a succinct and thought- ful history of group theory (chapter one), this work goes on to break new ground. Rather than offering yet another secondary ovation to Tocqueville or Hegel, this work is successful because it applies so many fresh intellectual concepts to the problem of political pluralism. For example, Rosenblum's thinking about the dynamic of group life makes recourse to concepts of "shif t ing invo lvements" and "exit, voice and loyalty" suggested by Albert Hirschman. This allows Rosenblum to escape theorizing about "group life" or "civil society" in the abstract. Instead the work explores the dynamic process of group formation in interesting and fruitful directions, offering nothing less than a novel definition of liberalism as the maximization of meaningful human options made possible by shifting involvements (p. 63).

Likewise, Rosenblum has brought to bear the literature of psychological de- velopment to suggest the ambivalence of group belonging. Using recent social scientific work on the psychology of joiners, she tests common assumptions that group belonging is an unqualified psychological good. As she suggests, individuals may often benefi t f rom membership in street gangs, hate groups or militias; while they may suffer from participation in even the most salutary organizations (p, 349), One of the firm if unsettling lessons is that the moral- ity or immorality of the cause has little to do with the actual uses individuals make of their membership: "Experience confirms the variable, often unpredictable personal moral significance of membership" (p. 363).

The main body of this book (chap- ters three through eight) represents an impressive and learned study of associational trends in contemporary Ameri- can society. Rosenblum's careful recon- sideration of more than a century of constitutional law pertaining to group rights, freedom of expression, and the

94 / SOCIETY �9 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1999

nature of association does much to sort out the confused and often tendentious jurisprudence brought to bear in support of coerced association, on the one hand, and the denial of associational autonomy, on the other. Her animating concern is to measure whether recent jurisprudential arguments for the free- dora of association square with the actual uses members make of their group belongings.

If one can fault Rosenblum in this exemplary work, it is that her focus on the individual uses of pluralism begs questions about the larger structural dynamic of contemporary society. As Durkheim and an entire tradition of social theory have suggested, the stories of individual lives hardly tell us ev- erything we need to know about the health of society at large. Regardless of the uses individual members make of their associational belongings, what does one make of the larger conditions of American society that seem to have left ind iv iduals more a n o m i c and deracinated, even whale fostering an a f f in i ty for sec tar ian cul ts , s treet gangs, hate groups, or the babble of identity politics'? Though undoubtlcdly reflected in the individual uses members make of their associational involvements, this urge toward recom- bination can just as easily be traced to the fundamental human need for mean- ing that Is frustrated by a contemporary pubhc life grown procedural, remote and uninspiring, o11 the one hand, or the anomie and specialization of a mass society, on the other.

Rosenblum alludes to a "change," "'instability'" or "attrition" in the nature of modern association (p. 21 ). But what drives this t ransformat ion and why should we view it as even partially san- guine? In the case of hate groups, for example, Rosenblum counts on "'forces for reintegration" to offset the dangers of an illiberal "convergence with other mainstream groups, at the level of public discourse and conduct" (pp. 276, 281). Yet by conceding that "'when individuals do not have competing con- nec t ions and the expe r i ence o f pluralism is unavailable to them," such a healthy reintegration is unlikely, the

author opens the door to critics who will claim that this lack of integrative pos- sibilities is itself characteristic of the cr is is o f c o n t e m p o r a r y socie ty . Rosenblum's diagnosis, if not her conclusions, seems not incompatible with the "jeremiad" of liberalism's critics against whom she here and elsewhere positions herself (pp. 29-33).

B e y o n d these b roader empir ical questions, we are also left with weighty questions about the nature of group life. First, by focusing narrowly on the uses of pluralism made by individuals, and the dynamic of voluntary affiliation among unencumbered individuals, this work silently incorporates the individu- alistic and contractarian assumptions of liberal theory. But what to make of the wide array of group affiliations--per-

"From the standpoint of the moral uses of pluralism, the

conditions under which members enter a totalistic community . . .may be less important than whether

they can leave."

haps the major i ty? - -mto which individuals are born and from which "exit" must seem an unimaginable option '~ It remains unclear whether these sorts of associations can ever satisfy the crite- rion of f reedom to dissociate which Rosenblum holds as trump: "'From the standpoint of the moral uses of pluralism, the conditions under which members enter a totalistic communi ty . . .may be less important than whether they can leave" (p. 101).

More puzzling still, even while pro- pounding this liberal option of "'exit" in defense of the rights of individuals to leave closed communities, Rosen- btum recurs to an oldel-, corporatist lan- guage to describe the nature of group life. There are reveahng discussions of the "'spontaneous" manner in which individuals form groups in order to dis-

cover their "emergent" preferences and "'unanticipated" expression (pp. 205- 210)--rather than affiliating behind any given or predetermined position, as legal reasoning or normative theory might suggest . Her a rguments against the logic of recent court decisions similarly invoke potentially corporatist notions of the nature o f the group: "So the nexus between membership and voice rests on the group's self-understanding and un- planned dynamic .... Association adds more to individual expression than the increased intensity of advocacy when speakers join together .... It adds a new voice to the roster of communicators" (pp. 198-199). Yet this understanding of the group as a real entity apart from its individual components seems potentially at odds with the liberal, contrac- tual assumptions that animate other parts of this analysis. Conversely, this same tension is visible in her simulta- neous criticism and appropriation of what she calls the "'moral sea change" of "liberal expectancy," or the hopeful view that ascriptive and ilhberal attach- ments will gradually recede in the face of new voluntary combinations (pp. 55- 61 I. On the one hand, Rosenblum pokes holes in this vision; on the other, her own implicit faith in the goods of indx- viduality and her emphasis on the option of"exi t" both appear to presuppose it (esp. pp. 63-64 ,349-350) . It is likely that this attests to intellectual honesty, rather than theoretical incoherence. But the question remains: can one have it both ways?

There is also the task of connecting Rosenblum's definition of pluralism as an act of voluntary association among n g h t s - b e a n n g indiv iduals with the larger philosophical sense of pluralism as the condition of competing and in- commensurable duties toward family, locality, friends, co-nationals, and coreligionists. This is more than a matter of taxonomy. For what we lose is a sense of group life as the birthplace of moral obligation. Evident in the work of moral philosophers such as Michael Oakeshott, John Gray or Joseph Raz, this alternative understanding of pluralism leads us to consider pluralism in terms of agonist ic decis ions among

competing moral imperatives whose sources perhaps lie rooted in the very nature of group life. This issue is sa- lient because Rosenblum counts on competing allegiances--i.e., love, family ties, friendship--to rescue one from the sway of pathological groups (pp. 276-277), even while denying that these relationships (should/do?) possess any compell ing moral force. Why should the most "moral" use of pluralism consist in maximizing the possibil- ity of "shifting involvements," rather than in a steadfast commitment to a single given duty? This preference is stipulated but never weighed against its potential cost: namely, a thin and eva- nescent world of transitory commit- ments, a vision that seems unwittingly to emerge from the author's portrayal of the dynamic of self-help groups (p. 360). We must finally place our faith in the hopeful distinction drawn between "the range of options provided by a fragmented pluralist society" and "the conditions that give rise to fearful anomie" (p. 328).

Rosenblum can hardly be faulted for uncovering this tension, rooted as it is in the very nature of associational life. To the contrary, this subtle book goes further than any contemporary work in its attention to the fundamental antino- mies of group life. Strictly speaking, groups are nothing more than their com- ponent individuals; yet anyone atten- tive to the nature of group life can hardly rest satisfied with this account. For better and worse, group life entails traditions, shared symbols, and even moral duties which are irreducible to individual membership. In the book's closing pages, we are left with a sense of compelling alternatives: a world where freedom to dissociate and asso- ciate attests to the intrinsic virtues of pluralism, even as the reality of human association indicts both the moral and social scientific applicability of that model.

Richard Boyd is an instructor in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago. He is a former Transaction Fellow and is working on his first book, a study of pluralism.


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